


Nabatean Secrets

by Kaithewolfgirl



Series: Fe3H shipping oneshots [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Adventuring, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Gen, Mystery(for Shamir at least), Other, might have left out some cindered shadows lore if so oops, this was a strange pairing so I hope it works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaithewolfgirl/pseuds/Kaithewolfgirl
Summary: Since the war ended, Shamir has had questions. She prefers to stay out of other people's business, but she's changed.
Relationships: Shamir Nevrad/Seteth
Series: Fe3H shipping oneshots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648780
Kudos: 1





	Nabatean Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> I've generated some strange pairings. hmmm. now to write this

After the war ended, Byleth had kept Shamir on her payroll. Her job consisted of cleaning up bandits and chasing down the occasional war criminal. All in all, it was steady work that paid good money.  
Something had been in the back of Shamir’s mind ever since the war ended. She had been associated with the monastery ever since the days it ran a prestigious academy. Before the war Crests had been a big deal. To the extent that the existence of crests caused the war.  
Ever since she had begun doing business with the monastery, she had some curiosity about the monastery’s inner circle. Lady Rhea was, of course, an untouchable goddess in her own right, at least to the people of Fodlan. By virtue of being foreign to Fodlan, Shamir had wisdom the others lacked.

Seteth and his sister Flayn. There was simply something different about them. Rhea didn’t trust people lightly, and yet she bore her heart and soul to these two.  
They even looked the same. Their varying shades of emerald green hair stuck out almost as much as the monastery’s foreigners.   
They had crests from saints Cichol and Cethleann, she had learned from Hanneman one night. He had found them mysterious as well. From his perspective, they were simply an academic curiosity. Seteth treated Flayn more like his child than his sister, at least that’s what Shamir thought. Admittedly, she had no idea as she had no siblings that she knew of.  
Seteth and his younger sister Flayn had left a few weeks prior. Byleth had mentioned in passing that it was monastery business. Vague enough to set Shamir’s spider senses off.   
Shamir had no loyalty to the Seiros knights, the Monastery, or even the archbishop herself. She was a mercenary and killer at her core.  
Shamir scanned the Garreg Mach dining hall. She spied Byleth at the end of one of the tables, picking at a hot bowl of stew. She moved to sit next to the archbishop.   
Much like her, Byleth was a woman of few words. She nodded and smiled in Shamir’s direction before returning to her stew.

“Monastery work treating you ok?” She asked, figuring it at least polite to make conversation.  
“I suppose,” Byleth replied. Circles hung below her green eyes.  
Byleth’s transformation occurred around 5 years ago after a tangle with those that slither in the dark. Vanquishing them had been an important part of the war.  
Rhea had acted like she had anticipated the transformation in some way. A specific ceremony had been planned and everything. The simple daughter of a mercenary Byleth was not.  
Was Byleth related to Rhea? To Seteth and Flayn? Come to think of it she knew little of Byleths mother. She was one of Rhea’s nuns who had caught captain Jeralt's eye, that she knew. However, her background or lineage was unknown to her.  
After completing her evening duties, Shamir thought to head to the library. Hopefully, she could catch Hanneman browsing the shelves before he retired for the night.  
After several minutes of prowling the dusty bookshelves, she found Hanneman at a desk with a steaming cup of tea. The candlelight illuminating the wooden shelves gave his face a reddish glow.

“professor.” She spoke to get his attention.  
The monocle-wearing crest professor turned around.  
“Shamir.” He replied. “Something I can help you with? I don’t think I've seen you in the library this late before.”  
“I had a few questions about your work.” She replied.  
Professor Hanneman could never resist the opportunity to talk about his work. If he was suspicious of her, he didn’t show it as he was already caught up in talking about his latest research.

“you see Adrestia carried out some absolutely horrific crest experiments before the war broke out. On children no less! I had several colleagues that believed that a child’s psyche interacts uniquely with their crest. Oh, but I had several others who thought that crests would hypothetically be bestowed on a person at any stage of their life and no-one would be wiser.” Hanneman inhaled deeply as he finished his sentence. 

Shamir nodded along. 

“I have a subject with several crests. Won’t name her. Having several crests gives her great magical power, but severely saps her health and lifespan. But I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Theoretically, I have worked out how to reverse engineer the process. But I still have to smooth over some details. And several of my assistants are working on their own theories. Lindhart and Annette… very fine young minds. I’m positive we will have it all worked out by the winter star.”  
Shamir thought for a moment before something piqued her interests. “you say crests can be implanted artificially?”

“that is quite correct. A person can be given a blood transplant from a crest bearing individual. There are quite a few people I suspect have acquired their crests in that manner. As for the second….”  
Hanneman’s expression clouded.  
“the second crest requires some powerful magic. You are, in a sense, fighting the laws of nature. The blood required for a second crest is immense in amount, in conjunction with some very finicky and dark magic. If done incorrectly, well, the consequences to caster and recipient are severe. You need only to look to Adrestia for the consequences of that.”

So crests could be implanted, without the recipient having had a crest bearing parent. Hmph. would have saved the kingdom nobles a lot of trouble had they known this. 

“can all the crests be transplanted in this way?” Shamir thought that examining Crest lineage of Seteth and Flayn might be a good start

“An excellent question! As far as I know, they can. It would explain the recent appearance of rare crests thought to have died out hundreds of years ago. For example, Flayn and Seteth have differing crests. Quite strange for brother and sister. And rare ones too. Of course, neither of them has been forthcoming for my research. But I have been able to make some hypotheses! Lindhart had done some of his research on them and he figured out that Flayn has the crest of Cethlean. And yet Cethleann had no record descendants. But Cethleann is long gone by Millenia. Perhaps Flayn is related to someone who received a blood transfusion from Saint Cethlean long ago? It's plausible, as Cethlean was known as a healer. But what of Saint Cichol? Our historical records are mere myths at this point.”  
Shamir recalled a squabble that had happened five for so years ago. She had been brought in to rout a western church intrusion on the area. The area was sacred to the church and of great importance to Seteth and Flayn for one reason or another. There was an island they defended as if it were a living family member. She had a lead she could follow now. Although, it was a several days ride from Garreg Mach. At the very least she would be faster on her own than with an army.  
“thank you, professor.” Shamir moved from her seat. “I will retire for the night.”  
“Feel free to come by my office anytime,” Hanneman replied. “It was great discussing my crest research with you.” 

Shamir set off for Rhodos Coast the next day. She mercifully had patrols in the morning and was able to leave soon after she was finished.  
It was a three days ride on her mare Luna. The mare had performed great feats of endurance as a warhorse, so the trip was no problem for her. The weather had been mercifully warm so camping was not a challenge.  
Luna was barely tired by the time the turquoise blue waters can into sight. It was a sunny day, but Shamir spotted dark grey thunderclouds on the horizon. Probably shouldn’t stay for too long, storms like that often rolled in fast.  
Luna loped at a steady pace along the beach. She wasn’t used to sand, so Shamir didn’t push her to go fast.   
What a beautiful day it was. Life as a child in Dagda had been unforgiving. But she had vague memories of visiting a beach with her mother on one of the odd days she wasn’t working or off somewhere.

She spotted a small island off the shore with a large stone jutting up from it. When they defended the beach all those years ago, Seteth had immediately made a beeline for that spot.  
It should be easy to swim there.  
Shamir fed Luna several oatcakes out of her hand and stripped to her smallclothes. The cream coloured mare headed to the edge of the nearby forest to graze while Shamir found a rock to leave her clothes on. Shamir dipped her toes in the cool water lapping at the sand. Fortunately, the ocean was relatively warm during the summer.  
With that, she waded in and swam for the island.   
Her work as a mercenary kept her in very good shape. Shamir reached the island with little effort.  
Sun warmed sand clung to her feet and calves.  
The stone was a plaque. The title read IN COMMEMORATION OF SAINT CICHOL. Below the title was a paragraph with Cichol's history and accomplishments. Church stuff. Something she knew to be here but hadn’t been up close. But something that Seteth had reason to be interested in. Maybe Seteth was an ancestor of Cichol? That would explain why he took particular interest in this site. Shamir scanned the plaque. At the very bottom of the stone monument was a round bulge in the rock. More writing was printed on it.

INDRYV: 2210( Before common time) – 10 (imperial year)  
Rest in peace.

Fresh flowers lay at the bottom of the monument

Indryv? Who might that be?  
Her life spanned several thousand years. So clearly she wasn’t human. Was she Cichol's wife? The flowers had not yet wilted, so the place had been recently visited. A thought sprang into Shamir’s head. Seteth and Flayn behaved more like father and daughter than brother and sister. It was in character for them to conceal their true relationship. Indryv was important to them. Maybe it was her perspective as a foreigner. She knew natives of fodlan that paid respects to deceased ancestors that they had never met. But the emotional intensity that she observed from Seteth and Flayn five years ago both seemed overkill. It was if they had met this person. Lived with this person.  
Wait.  
In all the time she knew Seteth, he hadn't physically changed. Neither had Flayn. Granted, Seteth was relatively young. But most men his age developed a wrinkle here or a grey hair there. Especially after the stress of a war spanning five years. Flayn had come to live with Seteth around 5 years ago as his “sister.” She hadn’t changed in the last five years either. Shamir had written her off as someone who looked young for their age. And hadn't been someone all that interesting to her during the war.  
The both of them, Flayn especially, spoke with a world-weariness odd for their age. 

They knew Indryv. Indryv was Seteths wife and Flayn's mother. She was buried near the monument because she had married into that family. Cichol was related to her by marriage.   
That raised another question.  
Did Flayn and Seteth know Saint Cichol?  
Perhaps it was a family tradition for them to bury relatives in the same place?

Shamir contemplated the monument for some time more. She swam back to shore when the wind began to pick up.  
She found Luna rolling around in forest clearing near the beach. While she went about getting dressed, she noticed something. A pile of burnt branches in the centre of a patch of dirt. Evidence of a campsite. Flayn and Seteth must have stayed the night here. Possibly several nights.  
She rode Luna back to the monastery at a swift pace. The sun began to dip underneath the horizon by the time she made it back.  
She took care to brush Luna. Dirt showed up easily on a light coloured horse.  
Flayn and Seteth were supposed to be gone for another week at least. Shamir had seen footprints around the campsite but nothing leading in any direction from the area. Very odd. Were they worried that someone would follow them?  
Seteth was a skilled wyvern rider, so it was plausible that they had travelled by wyvern. But Shamir had seen no evidence of wyverns at the campsite. No claw marks on trees, no droppings, none of that.

Aside from the storm that picked up near the beach, the trip back to Garreg Mach was uneventful. Shamir went about her usual business for the next several days while thinking of where to find the pair next. Questions flitted around the back of her head while she went about her duties. What had happened to Rhea? She had stepped down soon after the war ended, after being held in captivity by Adrestia. Shamir hadn’t heard anything from her since Byleth’s coronation as the archbishop. Had she crawled off somewhere to die in secret? Or was she out there somewhere? She had a lot in common with Seteth and Flayn. How old was Rhea, exactly? She must be several thousand years old at least. Probably even older.  
She was on stable duty this afternoon with Alois. He was bearable, if not for his habit of throwing terrible puns around. Their first task was stable muck-out. Alois had volunteered to clear the horse poop while Shamir followed up with fresh woodchips for bedding.

“Hah!” Alois laughed. “I’ve been a church knight for decades. Yet this never changes.” He gestured at the wheelbarrow full of horse manure as he spoke.”  
Shamir kept her head down and continued working.  
“It’s almost yesterday I was on stable duty with Jeralt! I’m not what I'm used to be back when I was with Jeralt.   
Last I saw him the bastard hadn’t aged a day. A day I tell you!”  
Shamir looked up from shovelling. “Did he not-“  
“correct! That is no exaggeration young lady.” He smiled. “He told me the secret one time over drinks one time.” Alois went on. “As a young man, Jeralt was mortally wounded, on some sort of mission to Zanado. Very dangerous place. But important to Rhea. She saved his life. Saved him she did. Gave him some of her blood! As well as completely curing him it lengthened his lifespan. That was decades ago, even before my time. I knew his secret, yes, but imagine my shock when I found him again six years ago.

Does that mean that Jeralt had acquired a crest?

Zanado.  
Shamir's memories of the place were not fond. She and several monastery students had saved Byleth from a pack of giant wolves sometime before the war.   
If it was important to Rhea, maybe it was important to Seteth. Was this the place the two of them had headed on secret church business?  
Fortunately several of Garreg Mach's knights owed Shamir favours. With people to cover her work, she set off for Zanado the next day.  
The red canyon Zanado was a far shorter trip than Faergus’s Rhodos coast but the terrain was far more difficult to navigate.  
Shamir suited up both herself and Luna with armour which slowed them down further. 

The journey uneventful, to Shamir’s surprise. She reached the bottom of the canyon without incident. With the defeat of those that slither in the dark and nemesis during the war, the beast sightings were far less frequent.  
She rounded a clump of trees. A putrid smell hit her.  
Shamir wretched, and for several seconds thought she was going to hurl on Luna’s mane. The mare whinnied and tossed her head. Shakily, Shamir took a breath through her mouth. Her reaction must have unsettled Luna.  
It smelled like death and rot. A familiar smell to Shamir after the five years war. The smell of a body that had sat out for weeks.  
As she rode closer to the ruins of Zanado, the cause of the horrific smell came into view.

A large white hill. Covered in smooth white stone. No, not stone. Scales.  
A dragon.

The body of a large white dragon lay curled up in front of Zanado’s ruins. Black tar leaked from its empty eye sockets. What looked like its teeth and claws littered the ground around its head. Its hard glossy hide was peeling from its bones in places.   
Liquified flesh leaked from one of its sides, forming a sludgy pool around the body. The dragon had been here for a month at least?  
Its bones and tendons remained perfectly intact.

Shamir held her hand over her mouth and urged Luna forward. Something colourful was in front of the beasts gaping maw.  
Flowers. Someone had planted flowers here.  
It was the creature that had appeared during the battle of Garreg Mach at the beginning of the war. 

This was Rhea.  
Rhea had come here to die. At a place that was of great importance to her. The flowers were from Seteth and Flayn. This was their “secret monastery business.”

Shamir sat in the saddle for a minute, alone with her thoughts.  
A shadow passed overhead.  
Something brilliantly white with a green plume on its tail.  
Luna squealed and reared.  
Shamir, blinded by the glare of sunlight, was tossed from Luna.  
Shamir cursed loudly in her native language as she hit the red dirt. She heard lunas hooves pound the earth on her right while the shadow wheeled around on her left. The shape grew larger.  
Once on her feet, Shamir came face to face with pupilless green eyes. She froze.

The eyes belonged to a marble coloured dragon the size of a carthorse. Its long tail brought its length to that of several houses.  
The two of them stared at each other in shock.   
Shamir instinctively grabbed the sword hilt on her left leg and brought it to her chest

The ground shook as something else touched down beside them. Another dragon, this one a slate grey colour and three times the smaller one's size.   
Shamir charged forward. She swiped the larger dragons claw. A foolish mistake. This left her wide open. The grey dragon reached forward and grabbed her between its two clawed feet. Shamir struggled and squirmed against it in an attempt to free herself. It was to no avail as the claws held firm.  
Firmly, enough to restrain her. But they did not attempt to crush her or end her life. Dark green irises stared down at her. She sensed no malice in them. It's scales layered on top of one another putting tendrils in mind.   
The grey dragon held her for a few seconds and made a rumbling grunt. Shamir dropped her sword and stopped struggling.  
Wings sprang up and Shamir was hoisted into the hair with a jolt. The ground shrunk while the dragon gained altitude. The smaller dragon sprang into the air as well, behind the grey one.  
The dragons set her down at the entrance of a small cavern. The grey dragon circled the mountain peak once and landed next to her.

“Seteth?”

Scales turned to skin and horns became hair. Seteth came to stand in front of her. His normally well-combed hair stuck out in places and dark circles lined his eyes.  
“Shamir. What are you doing here?” he asked her shortly.  
Shamir shifted her eyes to the side.

“I’m sorry. For your loss.” She said. Shamir was not the empathetic type and she hoped in this one instant she didn’t come off as cold. 

“I apologize for intruding.” Shamir sat down on a rock in front of the cavern entrance. “I'm not from Fodlan. And usually, I’m not one to intrude on another's business. But after the war. After the monastery's destruction. After the defeat of those that slither in the dark in their reality-bending underground city. I just- I had questions. Questions I couldn’t ignore this time. I don’t mean any harm.” 

Shamir expected Seteth to be angry. After all, she would be in his position. Instead, his expression softened.  
“I understand. War changes us. No matter how young or old. But I must ask you to keep what you saw a secret. Seteth walked toward Shamir’s rock and sat down beside her. “Or I must respond, in kind. As a foreigner to Fodlan, you must understand.”  
Shamir nodded her head. The tension of the past week or so left her body. All that was left was exhaustion.   
Shamir slumped against the mountain wall.   
Flayn landed on the mountain outcropping and changed into her familiar form as a human girl. 

“Since you are here.” Seteth shrugged. “you may as well join us for the night. We can retrieve your horse for you in the morning.”  
Dinner consisted of freshly caught whitefish, herbs, and wild carrots. Extra blankets had been set aside for Shamir as she had intended for this to be a day trip and had not brought camping gear.   
Seteth’s usual strictness and severity were absent from him tonight. He and Flayn bantered with an easy familiarity. Shamir sat in silence for most of the meal, eating her generous portion of fish and greens. 

The cooking fire burned to its coals and Flayn announced her intention to go to bed.

“Ugh! I’m too old for you to be tucking me in every night! And we have company!” Flayn complained loudly.  
“You wound me, Flayn. Very well. Goodnight.”  
Seteth returned to the fire. Within several minutes Flayn began to snore.  
“She’s your daughter, isn’t she,” Shamir said finally.  
“I suppose there's no hiding it now. Flayn is indeed my daughter.” Seteth nodded. “you never struck me as the curious type, Shamir. Granted, our relationship was that of leader and subordinate. Nonetheless, you were not a person I anticipated following me.”

Shamir explained to Seteth everything she had figured out in the last week.

“You are very intelligent Shamir.” He told her. “But you are still missing some details. Well, you’ve come this far. I suppose there’s no harm in filling in the blanks. I’m not descended from Saint Cichol, I am he.”  
“that makes sense,” Shamir replied. It explained his age. “then who was saint Cethleann? Was she your wife?”  
“close. She is my daughter.”  
So that’s why she had no descendants. She was Flayn.  
“Rhea was alive back then. She was a saint too.” Shamir paused. “she was Seiros, wasn’t she.”  
“yes. And the Goddesses last child.”  
Shamir wasn’t personally attached to the religion of Fodlan. So it came as more of a curiosity than a shock to her. She couldn’t imagine what such a revelation would do for a Fodlan native.  
“what of you, Shamir?” asked Seteth. He moved a little closer to her.  
“well. You know I’m from Dagda. My mother was a mercenary, my father was a knight of sorts. I learned archery from them. When I was a girl, my province was dry for several years. This caused a famine. My father died in a peasant uprising. Then the war with Adrestia happened. My mother left to fight and simply never returned. I wasn’t particularly close to my parents, so one day I just left. I can’t have been older than fourteen. I left Dagda with only my bow and wandered as a mercenary. And here I am.”  
“you are a foreigner. And I attest to the fact that Fodlan is not kind to foreigners.” Seteth replied to her.  
“No one in the monastery cared who I was and where I was from. I got the job done and Rhea made me a knight.” Shamir realized that she was not indifferent to Rhea’s disappearance. Was that why she wanted to come out here? “Rhea…. She came out here to die, didn’t she? This place was important to her, thousands of years ago.” Said Shamir.

Seteth shut his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Shamir herself wasn’t sad over Rhea's death. Rhea gave her steady employment and a good wage for years. She could say she was at least grateful. Mostly, She just felt sort of empty.  
She touched her fingers to Seteth’s elbow. A pointless gesture, yes, but it felt better than doing nothing.  
“Thank you, Shamir.” Seteth's voice was hoarse.

They sat together like that and stared at the fires coals.  
Shamir found herself shivering in the cold mountain air.   
“Here.” Seteth held out his cape.  
Shamir wordlessly took it and wrapped it around her shoulders.  
“Why are you being so kind to me?” Asked Shamir suddenly. “Byleth too. I was nothing more than a mercenary, but Rhea kept me on. I wasn’t even a follower of Seiros. And you. You would have been within your right to tear my throat out when I bumped into Flayn! I feel tired sometimes of moving from one thing to the next. Sometimes I think it would be nice to settle down.”   
A thought crossed Shamir’s mind that made her cheeks flush. She must be tired. That was why she was rambling.  
“I’ve seen many young warriors like yourself decide to start families. Men and women both maintain careers as knights while attending to loved ones and children. I hope I am not intruding at all when I ask this. But it was long ago since my wife died. And my daughter as we speak grows up. If you wish, we may get to know each other, seeing as our circumstances are not so different.”  
Shamir was a bit taken aback.   
“I, uh, am not opposed either. I accept your offer.”  
Seteth smiled in the dim light of the moon. “There’s no need to rush.”

With that, both of them abandoned their seats and retired for the night.

**Author's Note:**

> this was really fun to write. hope the formatting doesn't get hecked up this stime


End file.
